“I think it has to happen. There would be a worst effect if it didn’t happen.” That is what US President Joe Biden said regarding Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, which is set to start on Feb. 9.
Both sides of the political fence presented arguments against going forward with a trial of former president Donald Trump. Republican senators want to avoid being forced to choose between following their conscience and defending Trump’s behavior to shield themselves from his punitive reprisal.
Some Democrats think that a trial that would need 67 senators — 50 Democrats and at least 17 Republicans — voting to convict Trump is highly improbable. Besides, the trial would only divert energy and attention from Biden’s legislative agenda.
But leading Democrats argue that what Trump did is too serious to simply move on. A trial by the Senate offers the best way to hold Trump fully accountable for his assault on the Constitution and the rule of law. Senator Chis Coons of Delaware said, “We need to find a way to hold President Trump and those who encouraged and supported the violent protest that overran our Capitol three weeks ago accountable for our history and our future.”
Also, a number of Democrat senators believe the evidence against Trump is so damaging that at least 17 Republican senators will vote to convict Trump. As Senator Richard Blumenthal said, “It’s a question of whether Republicans want to step up and face history.” Republican senators themselves will be on trial.
The Trump trial brings to mind the impeachment trial of President Joseph Estrada. He was accused of bribery, graft, corruption, violating the country’s 1987 constitution and betraying the public trust.
On Jan. 16, 2001, the impeachment trial moved to the investigation of an envelope containing evidence believed to prove that Estrada received bribe money. However, his allies in the Senate called for a vote on opening the envelope. The result was 11-10 in favor of not opening the envelope.
Those who voted to suppress the suppose incriminating evidence were Senators Blas Ople, Juan Ponce Enrile, Nikki Coseteng, Gregorio Honasan, Robert Jaworski, Tess Oreta, John Osmeña, Ramon Revilla, Miriam Santiago, Vicente Sotto, and Francisco Tatad.
After the vote, the 10 senators who voted to open the envelope walked out of the impeachment proceedings. That evening, a crowd gathered at the EDSA Shrine to express their indignation at the attempt to defend an impeached president. The crowd grew bigger with every passing day, realizing that Estrada had lost the support of the people, Cabinet members started to resign. When the military made known it was withdrawing its support, Estrada left Malacañang for good.
Tatad, Honasan, Jaworski, Osmeña, and Santiago all lost in their bid for reelection. Coseteng, having reached her term limit as senator, ran for representative of her congressional district, but lost ignominiously.
Oreta, who danced the Irish jig and hooted when the prosecutors walked out of the Erap impeachment proceedings, deemed it wise not to run for office again. She fielded instead her daughter as candidate for representative of the Oreta political bailiwick. Poor girl, she paid for the sins of the mother.
Santiago’s image as a graft buster was erased. She made it to the Senate on her second attempt after the Erap fiasco when she rode on GMA’s lavishly funded and military-escorted campaign caravan.
Mind you, Tatad, Honasan, Jaworski, Osmeña, and Santiago only voted against opening an envelope believed to contain evidence incriminating to Erap. They had not voted to dismiss the charges against him.
That could be the reason why President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s allies in the House of Representatives resolutely tried to block all attempts to impeach her in 2005 and 2006. They did not want to be forced to decide according to the dictates of their conscience or on the basis of their fear of the retaliation of a known vengeful person.
Allegations of cheating against Arroyo gained momentum one year after the May 2004 elections. In June 2005, a former official of the National Bureau of Investigation presented in a press conference audio recordings of wiretapped conversations between Arroyo and an official of the Commission on Elections. The recordings indicated that Arroyo was asking the election official to rig the election so that she would win over her opponent by one million votes. The recordings became the basis of the impeachment case filed against her that year. But the House of Representatives, dominated by Arroyo lackeys, voted 158-51 to dismiss the complaint.
Another impeachment move was initiated by civil society groups against her in 2006. They accused her of 22 wrongdoings, including rigging the election, corruption, human rights abuses, and violation of the Constitution.
The rabid supporters of President Arroyo in the Lower House said that no impeachment complaint against her would prosper and the opposition could only blame themselves if the impeachment bid fails because of their failure to get the required number of endorsers of the complaint.
I surmised that their precipitate blaming of the opposition was their attempt to wash their hands of the blame for the imminent summary dismissal of the impeachment complaint. They knew very well they could not escape responsibility for the dismissal of the charges against Arroyo would still be their own act. They still would be the ones to cast the votes to dismiss the complaint.
Curiously, the Catholic bishops of the Philippines opposed the move. Said they: “We are not inclined at the present moment to favor the impeachment process as the means for establishing the truth, unless the mindsets of all participating parties are guided by no other motive than genuine concern for the common good.” The bishops feared that if the impeachment process went the same way as the year before, “It would dismay every citizen, deepening the citizen’s negative perception of politicians.”
It did go the same way as the year before. The same House of Representatives populated by Arroyo minions threw out the complaint. But unlike the bishops, I do not think it was an unproductive political exercise.
The process, though abbreviated it may have been, provided the citizens a good basis for deepening their perception of the members of the House of Representatives. It exposed those who voted on the basis of the common good and those who did on the basis of subservience to their benefactor. It enabled the citizens to determine who they should vote out of Congress.
The Catholic bishops lost their moral ascendancy to pontificate about good governance and to denounce corrupt officials. By condoning Arroyo’s attempt to rig the election of 2004 — one archbishop said “everybody cheats anyway” — the citizens have turned their back on the bishops.
The Church leaders’ benign attitude towards high-ranking public officials ostensibly guilty of big-time graft and corruption and massive electoral fraud juxtaposed with the dire warnings to a city councilor endorsing an ordinance meant to alleviate poverty in his district can be expected to diminish the Catholic Church’s influence on her faithful when it comes to matters of morality.
Oscar P. Lagman, Jr. is a retired corporate executive, business consultant, and management professor. He has been a politicized citizen since his college days in the late 1950s.